Open Source and Electronic Systems

Jeremy Bennett

In his keynote at last year’s NMI Industry Summit, Keith Williams, VP Intelligent Systems at Altran, identified open source as one of the four key pillars underpinning future growth of the electronic systems industry in the UK and beyond. Let us put that into context. In its 2014 annual report, ESCO noted that the industry employed 850,000 people in the UK, contributing £80bn to GDB — 5.4% of the entire UK economy. By last year, that had grown to 1 million people and £100Bn.

So a key pillar to future growth must be nurtured. To that end NMI, in partnership with the BCS Open Source Specialist Group and the UK Open Source Hardware User Group, has organized its first open source conference. Speakers include Gurj Bahia of Samsung, Ebrahim Bushehri of Lime Microsystems and Andrew Katz, the lawyer behind the Solderpad License and a key contributor to the CERN Open Hardware License, as well as many other key players from the open source industry.

Attendance is free, and there are still some places left. You can sign up through any of the three sponsoring organizations. I hope I shall see you there.